A Four Book Series
by birdwoman95
Summary: I always believed that the series would have been well-served by ending at GoF. For me, it changes completely after that. Anyhow, this is my quickly written, unbeta'd triwiz conclusion. No pairings, no bashings, slightly OOC, slightly AU.
A part of me has always believed the series should have stopped at four books. The triwizard tournament is a fantastic opportunity to sew up all the loose ends. This is my attempt at doing so. It is not a great one, quickly written, but there it was, so I wrote it.

Harry sat, staring at the cursed tri-wiz cup.

It fairly glowed with enchantments.

He'd made his way through the murder-maze as stealthily as he could – avoiding traps when he could, confronting danger only when he had to. After three years of forced confrontation, he'd finally, fully taken off his rosy-colored glasses. The world of magic was a world that was bound and determined to throw Harry into danger whenever it could. He'd snuck books and studying in all throughout the previous summer, using his correspondence with his godfather and former teacher / honorary uncle as a way of getting free tutoring.

Though he'd tried to be proactive - even if he didn't know that was the term for his new cautious, studious attitude - he'd still been caught up in the triwiz. He'd used it as an excuse to skip classes that were useless (divination, astronomy, and history) and push himself practically in all of the rest of the subjects.

It had kept him alive to this – the center of the maze.

Of course, he'd had help. Someone had pitted the older contestants against each other. He'd had some ideas on that. But now, he sat, studying the cup.

He heard the approaching footsteps. It was Diggory; he'd made it past Aragog's kid and to the center with Harry.

He stopped abruptly.

"Harry?" he asked tenuously, wondering why the younger boy was sitting, staring at the cup, instead of claiming victory.

"It's a portkey. Twice over," Harry stated, not taking his eyes from the cup.

"Huh?"

Harry sighed then looked at the Hufflepuff champion. "The cup. It's a portkey. And there are two portkey enchantments on it. Look." Harry cast the spell revealing enchantments and explained the output to Cedric, who then sat down next to Harry.

"So you haven't taken it…"

"Because it's probably another attempt to kill me. I have one every year at this time. First year, it was Voldemort possessing Quirrel. Second year, Lockhart tried to obliviate me and feed me to a basilisk. Last year, Lupin tried to eat me and then there was this horde of dementors…"

"With that record, you'd best be wary of Moody… except he's the Headmaster's best pal."

"Is he?" Harry asked then shook his head. "You saw what happened between Krum and Delacour – heck Krum got you, too. Who's the only person we've all seen casting the imperious?"

"Moody…" Cedric breathed.

"He tried to help me with the other tasks – coached me on the first and gave Neville, my good friend, a book with the gillyweed in it – just before I had to figure out how to breathe underwater. Then, my competitors suddenly start dropping like flies in this task…"

"To get you here?"

"To get me to touch that cup… the one with multiple portkey spells placed on it."

"But… he's Moody! MOODY! The Headmaster's best friend."

"Is he? He drinks from that flask EVERY HOUR. You ever taken polyjuice, Cedric?"

"Polyjuice? What… wait, that's the potion that allows you to take on the physical appearance of another live person, yeah?"

"Yeah. I think he's got the real Moody stashed – probably somewhere in the castle – and he's someone else. I think he's a relative of Barty Crouch…" that's what the map said, anyhow – the map he'd almost lost to 'Moody' and Snape last week. "Someone who wants me to take a portkey somewhere… "

Cedric straightened his spine. "Whoever is on the other end of that portkey, they won't be expecting two of us. They won't expect us to come out firing. You know the key to landing a portkey, right?"

Harry nodded, "After the fiasco at the World Cup, I practiced a few times. But my ankle is pretty messed up…"

Cedric pointed his wand at Harry's leg, did a diagnostic and a healing spell. Harry smiled.

"You know, you're acting awfully Gryffindor, Cedric. You sure you want to do this?"

Cedric nodded. "Yeah. I want to see, and I want to stop them. When we land, we use reductos. No prisoners."

"Here – use this supersensory spell – should let us see and hear if we land in a dark or quiet place…"

When they were ready, the two boys lined up next to the cup and touched it together. They landed as quietly as could be managed and moved quickly from their original positions to what cover they could find.

"Wormtail, he's landed. Find him. Kill the spare!" a raspy voice from a rag bundle demanded.

A snake slithered from behind a great fire and approached Harry's hiding place.

Harry and Cedric's eyes met across the space between their two graves. They nodded and both jumped up at the same time, firing at the enemy. Cedric hit the snake straight off. Harry, knowing just who and what Wormtail was, blasted off the traitor's legs. Then, spying the great cauldron, he hit that next, figuring that man-sized cauldrons must be necessary for whatever ritual he'd been brought here for. He couldn't imagine they had a spare lying around.

The resulting hiss, as the potion boiled off in the fire, caused a scream of fury from the bundle that Cedric had tried stunning twice after binding it.

"Accio wands…" Harry whispered as he pointed at the downed Wormtail, and two wands flew into his hands. He pocketed them before rounding the tombstone that had sheltered him. The baby thing was furious; the snake was shredded; an unconscious Wormtail was bleeding sluggishly from what used to be his legs.

Harry didn't take any chances and secured the rat as well as stupefying him. Looking at the baby-thing, he hissed as his scar seemed to catch fire.

"Cedric, I think that baby thing holds a part of Voldemort. My scar hurts just like it did when Quirrel had Voldemort in his head."

Cedric's brows drew together in question, but he just nodded. "Oooookay. So it's voldebaby. I'll carry that thing, you carry the wizard, and we'll use the cup to portkey back.

They portkeyed to the center of the winner's platform, which was the focus of the crowd. They hadn't finished landing before the judges and professors began to approach them.

"Aurors, we need Aurors here!" Cedric demanded as soon as they landed. Harry simply aimed a stupefy at the for-once-not-vigilant Moody. That man had been captivated by the baby-thing that Cedric was carrying. Now, he was out for the count. Putting his wand back in his holster, Harry prepared to be scolded. Right on time, his "head of house" took him to task.

"Mr. Potter! What is the meaning of attacking a teacher?" Professor McGonagall was outraged.

"Detention for the rest of the year, Potter!" Professor Snape, a bit more concerned with the packages that Potter and Diggory were carrying, distractedly yelled.

"Professor Snape, could you check Professor Moody's flask, sir?" Cedric asked respectfully. Snape's eyes narrowed, then he did as the champion asked.

Flipping up the lid, he wafted the smell to his nose. Though he was a consummate actor, the surprise couldn't be held from his response. "Polyjuice."

"Move it. Coming through! Make way for the minister!" An auror pushed through the crowd, the Minister for Magic in his wake.

"Mr. Potter, Mr. Diggory, what is the meaning of this?!" Minister Fudge demanded.

Cedric answered.

"I got to the center of the maze, only to find Potter was already there, sitting, looking at the cup. He told me that it was enchanted as a portkey – then he showed me how there were two portkey spells placed on it. He was convinced it was a trap. He said his trail through the maze had been too easy. He'd seen that someone had put Krum under the imperious, and Krum took Fleur out of the competition. He almost took me out, but Harry saved me. That alone would have demanded that I allow him the benefit of the doubt.

"Since he was convinced it was a trap, I convinced him that whoever was on the other side would not be waiting for two armed, prepared wizards. We landed then took cover immediately. We were in a graveyard. There was a setup for a ritual – a man-sized cauldron bubbled over a fire. When the enemy showed themselves, we attacked."

"Enemy?! What enemy?!"

Harry took that chance to speak up.

"This, Minister Fudge, is Peter Pettigrew." He kicked at the body he'd dropped when they'd landed. "He's the true betrayer of my parents. The wizard who framed my godfather, Sirius Black. I tried to tell you about him last year."

"That can't be…" Fudge whispered, even as his auror was doing an identification spell.

"It is Pettigrew, sir, I recognize him, as he was in my house," Professor McGonagall confirmed, even as the auror's spell came back as positive for Pettigrew.

Just then, the fake Moody's polyjuice started to wear off.

The crowd gasped as a young man was revealed, and an anonymous spectator shouted, "That's Barty Crouch, Junior!"

"Didn't he die in Azkaban?"

"Apparently not."

Random whispers were covering Harry's thoughts. So, Crouch got his own son out of Azkaban somehow, but put Sirius in without a trial… Harry felt absolutely no pity for the man or his fate at that point.

"Why did you injure Pettigrew so grievously, young men?" the auror asked, attempting to heal the rat.

"He's a rat animagus," Harry answered distractedly. "I didn't want him getting away… again."

The auror nodded and put magic inhibiting cuffs on the still unconscious wizard. "Oh," Harry interrupted, "Here are the wands that he had on him. The dark one has a familiar feeling to it…" he held them out, and from his elevated position, most of the crowd could see just what he held.

The crowd gasped almost as one as the wand in question was revealed… "that's the Dark Lord's wand… you know who's wand…"

The auror gingerly took possession of both wands.

Meanwhile, the air started to get cold.

Fudge had called his neighborhood dementor in for a job.

"Cornelius!" Dumbledore was aghast as the dementor swooped down on Barty Crouch.

"Dumbledore! He is an escaped Azkaban high-security prisoner. This is protocol: kiss on sight!"

"Still, we could have questioned him first…"

While the two figureheads argued, Harry got an idea. Surreptitiously palming his wand again, he aimed at the baby-thing.

If he ever needed a strong, silent incantation, it was now.

With all of his will, he thought "Wingardium Leviosa!"

The baby-voldemort-thing flew out of Cedric's inattentive arms…

… and straight into the maw of the waiting dementor. Voldiebaby screeched the entire way, promising retribution or favor or anything to spare himself…

The dementor didn't gulp audibly, but Harry was almost certain he heard it lick its lips.

Dumbledore's eyes whipped to Harry who was putting his wand back into its holster.

"Mr. Potter! Explain yourself!"

"Well, sir," Harry tried valiantly to hold in his smirk, "it was an evil spirit of some sort. Red eyes were kind of a dead giveaway – even if it hadn't ordered Wormtail to kill Diggory here. I figure that's what dementors are for, yeah? Disposal of evil souls?"

"That was not your decision to make! We should have studied…"

"Dumbledore, for Merlin's sake, the boy just rid us of a potential problem. I have a hard time understanding why you'd want an evil soul – one who had already been working with two death eaters – still on this plane?!"

"It was almost certainly a piece of Voldemort, Minister, and as such…"

"Nonsense! That creature is dead."

Harry tuned the arguments out. He stood, surveying the crowd, with a clear mind. Indeed, his head felt better than it had… ever! Maybe that free-floating abomination being gone would make it so the little piece of Voldie that was in his scar (Harry'd figured that bit of information out in the prior year, putting together clues from prior confrontations and worrying incessantly how he could defeat the soul shard) would finally give up the fight and Harry would have peace. It certainly FELT like he'd won.

He surveyed the crowd, mostly chatting amongst themselves. He saw Lucius Malfoy staring at him.

The man nodded almost imperceptibly.

It would be the only thank you Harry ever got for finally vanquishing Voldemort.

A/N… the rest of the horcruxes remain dormant as there is no floating spirit out there. If Bella got out, she'd certainly try to resurrect Voldie… but she doesn't. Likewise, no one finds the tiara.

The locket is destroyed when Sirius hires the goblins to destroy all of the dark stuff from Number 12.

Dumbledore goes after the ring and is cursed for his trouble. Though he manages to destroy it, the rotting curse in the ring kills him.

Thus, the elder wand was defeated.

Additionally, Dumbledore never got around to informing Harry of the prophecy. As Harry never heard of it, he was not guided by it. The prophecy was nullified by Harry's feeding voldiebaby to the dementor. Though the shard remained in his scar, between his mother's protection and his own self confidence, Harry dominated that piece until the day he passed onto his next great adventure.

And they all lived.


End file.
